Precision 7550 & 7750 Owners' Thread

@Ionising_Radiation Wow thank you for this information! Is the RTX 5000 DGFF3 interchangeable with the RTX 5000 DGFF2? I'm thinking there must be some sort of catch if the card is able to draw 30W more power, since the power supply is only 180W for the 7550.

 

Pretty straightforward catch: if the 7750's RTX 5000 dGPU is inserted into the 7550, one of three things happen:

1. The AC adaptor is overloaded, and the dGPU is power-limit throttled by an upstream controller, despite the dGPU itself not exceeding its own power limits.
2. The AC adaptor is not overloaded, but the EC in the 7550 has a hard power limit to the dGPU of 80 W, and hence the latter is power-throttled again, upstream of the dGPU itself.
3. Neither the AC adaptor is overloaded nor does the EC have power limits, and the dGPU is free to draw as much power as it needs until it either thermal-throttles, or hits the 110 W power limit, and is hence power-limit throttled.

 

Are there any physical differences between DGFF2 and DGFF3? You mentioned that the RTX 3000 card is compatible between the 7550 and 7750, which is because they both use the same part.


EDIT: I believe it was mentioned somewhere that DGFF3 is exclusively for the 77X0.

In this case, it seems we are limited to 80W for the 7550.

 

In the 7X30 and 7X40 series from 2018 and 2019, DGFF2 and DGFF3 were clearly different.
DGFF2:


DGFF3:


There was a leak of the new DGFF design late last year in the 51NB forums. We didn't realise it at the time, but this is probably the new universal Precision DGFF form factor that will be used. Notice how the size is intermediate between the 7530/40 DGFF2 and the 7730/40 DGFF3. Furthermore, the power delivery has drastically improved: 6 VRMs for the GPU alone, and two for the VRAM, versus 5+1 on the Quadro RTX 5000 (old) DGFF2

 

I just recalled what a Dell rep mentioned, in this comment (emphasis mine):

This fits with what I have discovered so far: the RTX 3000 part is the same. If the form factors for the RTX 4000 and 5000 do not differ (I don't think they will: the new DGFF is actually quite big, possibly even larger than the old DGFF3), then I don't see why the 7750 RTX 5000 would not be compatible with the 7550.

However, this is all just speculation: we can only be sure when users (or reviewers who are intent on tearing down these machines) have these machines on hand. Give it a couple more weeks, I suppose.

 

We basically have to wait until someone opens up their system to know about card compatibility. It looks like there is plenty of extra room on that sample "new" DGFF card pictured above. However it is still possible that the 17" cards are "longer" so they will not fit in the 15" system. (Again, going back to how things were with MXM 3.0a vs 3.0b.)

If the RTX 4000 & 5000 cards are the same except for the vBIOS, then a vBIOS flash should be all that is needed to add the extra 30W to the power limit (actual card swap not necessary). This would be similar to the situation with the Quadro P3200 card in the Precision 7530, which could get a power boost by flashing on the vBIOS from the same card in the 7730. In the case of these new cards, a 240W power supply might be beneficial, but whether there is any benefit to raising the power limit depends on if the system will actually deliver the extra power to the card or if there is some limitation (physical, or in the EC programming) that would prevent that.

 

Who knows, a VBIOS flash may fail, like it did on my RTX 5000 vs the 7740's RTX 5000. That said, I still think the uploaded VBIOS was corrupt in some way: the file size of the VBIOS on the TechpowerUp database was smaller than the VBIOS I read from my RTX 5000 with a programmer. Perhaps the new 7750 VBIOS could be flashed back onto the 7540's.

 

Proud owner of an old and trusty refurbed Precision 7710. Sounds like a distant airplane engine taking off with a moderate amount of graphics work (gaming or even just watching youtube videos)

Due to this, I am biting the bullet and ordered one of these 7750s:

• Mobile Precision 7750 CTO BASE
• Intel Xeon W-10885M (8 Core, 16MB Cache, 2.40 GHz to 5.30 GHz, 45W, vPro) 1
• 17.3-inch, UHD, 3840 x 2160, 60 Hz, Anti-Glare, Non Touchscreen, 100% Adobe, 500 Nits, HDR400, WVA
• 128GB, 4X32GB, DDR4 2933Mhz Non-ECC Memory
• M.2 512GB PCIe NVMe Class 50 Solid State Drive
• 2x Additional 2TB M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD Class 40
• NVIDIA Quadro 5000
• Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 Wireless Card 1

Bit of a multipurpose machine:

• Neural nets
• Gaming
• Photography
• On demand VMWare Workstation vms

Will update all on performance improvements between 7710 and 7750 with some benchmarks when it gets here.

Order is around 3 weeks away to be delivered.

 

Apparently the i9 is a couple of weeks away. Dell let our IT group know so they are going to quote it both ways.

Homer

 

Dell reached out to let me know my order for the 7550 has been delayed with unknown ETA. Cited parts shortage.

EDIT: Production on hold due to parts shortage. Motherboard (W-10885M) and Palmrest Assembly out of stock.